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William Saunders: Yeah, I mean, I just actually saw a headline this morning that, I think 4 heads of state had been threatened if they allowed the Chinese cultural group whose name I could never pronounce correctly, Shen Yun, to perform. So when we say “transnational repression,” I want you all to say what you mean, but I think of it as trying to silence any voices of criticism of the Chinese Communist Party.
Cynthia Sun: Yes, that’s correct. And that’s how the FBI would also classify it. It’s when any foreign malign government tries to interfere with domestic— whether it’s politics or national security, or domestic sovereignty, democratic institutions. And the number that you saw is correct, and now it’s actually been updated to 6 heads of state, including Canada, the Prime Minister Mark Carney; Australia, the Minister Anthony Albanese; Taiwan, Italy, Denmark, and South Korea.
So since January of this year until February 27th, today’s recording day, there’s been 6 heads of state, and the threats are quite violent. A few days ago, the Prime Minister of Australia was actually evacuated from his residence because the threat read something like, “I will stain the halls with pools of blood if you let Shen Yun performance go on.”
And then the one to the Canadian Prime Minister read, “If you don’t care about Mark Carney and all Canadian high-ranking officials’ personal safety, then go ahead with the performance.”
And obviously for William Lai in Taiwan, the threat said they won’t rule out shooting Lai Ching-te, which is his Chinese name, or crashing an explosive-loaded SUV into the presidential office building. So these are very, very serious terrorist threats. We classify them as terrorism because they’re targeting leaders.
We’ve also been targeted. I’ve received multiple threats. Mark has, our boss has. We’ve received photos of guns as well to our email addresses, and generally it’s to silence us.
W: So those obviously violate state and federal laws, and you report them to the FBI and local authorities, right?
C: Yeah, we’ve applied every measure that we could. We’ve also been in contact with Homeland Security because the previous interviewee that you mentioned, Cheng Pei-Ming, the only known survivor of organ harvesting, he’s also being threatened. His house was broken into.
So we’ve been tracking and reporting all of these, and there’s an investigation ongoing.
W: How, in the face of those kind of threats, how do you keep going? I’m sure they’re intended to intimidate you. How do you keep going in the face of that?
C: I actually find motivation in it. Just to give a bit of background, my father was an activist in the ’89 Tiananmen Square protests. He was a college student back then in Shandong Province. And because I have his legacy, because my grandmother also rejected Chinese communism and she became a U.S. citizen; because I have, like, these 3 generations before me that lived and survived under communism, I really felt like, you know, after graduating college, like, I really want to go this human rights route to at least try to change things for the better for current Chinese society, for my cousins who are still in China working for the television broadcast there, my grandpa who’s too sick to leave inner Mongolia.
And when I receive these threats, I actually find it a kind of second verification that the work that we’re doing here at the center is actually accurate, that we have the facts right. We’re doing something that actually threatens to expose all of the crimes against humanity Beijing has been undergoing for 26+ years.
And whenever they talk about, “Oh, you and your family will be killed within 2 months.” I always think about this anecdote:
I was in China over 10 years ago visiting family, and during this tour group, there was this, I guess, middle-aged Chinese man that would not stop bragging about his Chinese leather shoes. And we were going up this mountain in this cable car. As soon as we stepped off of the cable car, his brand new shiny black leather shoes lost both of their soles. And it was just the entire trip, we were just hearing nonstop about his shoes. He just bought them and then the soles come off.
And that’s really how I think about China. It’s really a paper tiger, a house of cards. And a lot of my Chinese relatives, friends, acquaintances, people who have visited China will tell me that there is a surge of people who now reject the CCP. I mean, we’ve seen the Paper Revolution, we’ve seen COVID fundamentally change the way people think about the CCP, and they’ve lost all trust.
W: How about you, Mark?
Mark Yang: Yeah, I mean, for me, I… similarly, I feel… I feel even more compelled to actually tell people about what is happening in China. I also come from, you know, a family that has been kind of persecuted by the CCP, and also I was born in China, so I grew up from that environment where I saw all these repression firsthand.
Some of my neighbors and friends, they practice Falun Gong, and they were put into prison camps. And I remember one of our friends, he was a painter, but when he was put into the prison, the police literally hung him by the wrists using handcuffs.
And after many, many hours, the handcuffs literally got buried into his flesh. And when he came out, you saw those, like, huge scars on his forearms and the wrist. Basically, that completely destroyed his career. He no longer has those fine motor movements that are required to paint and be an artist.
And also in my elementary school, in the textbook were literally figures of little kids talking to each other. I still remember vividly one kid was saying, “Oh, have you heard about our neighbor that is a Falun Gong practitioner? And she just jumped off of the building thinking that she will become a god.” And then the other kid immediately followed up like, “Oh, oh my gosh, yeah, I heard about that. And I heard Falun Gong practitioners do burn themselves alive thinking they will become gods too. How scary! These are the evil cults. They’re so evil, we have to avoid them at all costs.”
So this was the kind of, you know, environment that I grew up in. And I was extremely shocked when I learned about those, and those left strong impressions in me. And now when I have the chance to live in this free country, and I really want to make it more known on what is happening behind the doors in China, and all those crazy human rights abuses that are happening over there.
So exactly like what Cynthia said, now we are seeing these bomb threats, we’re seeing these death threats and such. Well, that precisely means that what we are talking about [is] the truth.
W: Well, Cynthia and Mark, thank you both so much for joining us today. And thank you for all the work you’re doing to bring attention and change to the human rights abuses happening in China and beyond, including the United States. I also want to thank our listeners for joining us. Please consider sharing this episode with others and exploring more of our content at our webpage humanrights.catholic.edu
We’ll see you here next time for another episode of the Barefoot Lawyer Reports.
The Center for Human Rights has published countless articles and reports on issues facing China, the U.S., and the world. Reports from late 2022 revealed the existence of secret Chinese police stations operating around the world, including in the United States, raising serious concerns about foreign intimidation. A detailed analysis from the Center for Human Rights examines documented cases in Europe and the U.S. and reviews the legal frameworks that could help address this growing challenge. To read this report, go to our Research and Analysis page on humanrights.catholic.edu